The present invention relates to a miniature--i.e., small--clothes dryer which may be either portable or wall mounted.
Clothes dryers as household appliances are well known in the art. Such dryers are disclosed in numerous patents such as the U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,250 and U.S. Pat. No. Des. 183,665. Conventional clothes dryers of this type are provided with a rotatable drum or tumbler for tumbling clothes; a heating element for generating heated air; a blower for moving heated air through the tumbler and a dust filter for filtering lint entrained in the air before the air is exhausted through an outlet.
While such clothes dryers are extremely convenient to use, they require a special installation in a laundry room or the like so that the exhausted air may be piped through a building outlet.
While conventional clothes dryers have a capacity for drying several pounds of clothes, it is often desirable to dry just one or two items of clothing such as a pair of socks, underwear or a bathing suit. Such items are normally hung out to dry on a clothes rack or a clothes line in order to avoid operating a conventional clothes dryer for such a minor task. In a hotel room, such items are often hung in the bathroom, for example, over the bathtub.
Several attempts have been made to design and produce a miniature clothes dryer which would dry one or two items of clothing in reasonably quick order. However, none of these prior clothes dryer designs have proven successful. The U.S. Pat. No. 4,918,290 discloses a "portable towel heating device" which incorporates a self-contained source of heat and may be used to warm or dry towels in the folded condition. Since the towels remain stationary during the drying process, drying takes an inordinate length of time.
Similarly, the U.S. Pat. No. Des. 314,070 provides a "wall mounted garment dryer" which is simply a box for insertion of small items of clothing. Hot air is provided to this box through a dryer nozzle and hose from an external source, not shown.